Pros
There are very few reasons to work here, and even fewer if you plan on making major contributions to your LinkedIn profile. For every positive there is a negative... If you stay for a 12 hour day they'll provide you with lunch, dinner and coffee...not paid OT though (is this even legal?). There is paid vacation and sick time, but good luck getting vacation approved. If it is approved, then you better bring your laptop. The pay for developers would be considered competitive *if* it were normal 40hr weeks. The health insurance is good, covering dental and vision as well. The owner will offer you stock options, but for a company that seems to be going nowhere, it just seems worthless. They try to follow good agile development practices, but with the owner having urgent tasks and often, it de-rails the cycle.
Cons
The cons out weigh any pro, and with Austin being centered around a higher quality of life, this company belongs in a different region. You are *strongly* urged to work "optional" 12 hour days, and must be on-call over weekends. On normal 8 hour days, you MUST be there from 9am on-the-dot until 5pm, with no leeway to work from home. They run it as if you are in the banking industry, always needing to be there for customers...it is software development! Most of upper management is new to the company, and hasn't a clue about the direction of the current projects since the owner changes his mind every week. Speaking of new...most of the dev team are new hires, and any hire that had talent has been run off by poor decisions and being over-worked. The turnover rate here is awful! 50% of the company left within 3 months, and average employment time is about 8 months. Not only is the dev team new to the company, but majority of them are new to the industry or to their job description. And with all the new blood and strict management, any culture has left the company. The management doesn't care about the welfare of it's employees despite being a health company. Junk food is often served, coffee offered instead of green juice, mildewy water from the tap, long hours so no time for your workouts, and no time for stress-relieving vacation time because of unrealistic deadlines. As part of the dev team you will spend majority of your time in meetings, then will have to catch up on your real tasks on your own time or during unpaid overtime. I'll offer a good piece of advice: be a "Yes-man" to the owner...this will keep you on his good side and prevent you from entering the ring of one of his "yelling-matches". His ego and money will blur his vision often, leaving you to fulfill his wish at an unrealistic pace. The dev area is like a pit in a prison...it has a dark, quiet atmosphere where everyone works with headphones in and heads down, unless you are in a meeting room arguing. Again, not the type of atmosphere you'd expect to see in an Austin office.